Facebook’s WhatsApp back online in Brazil after temporary block

Associated Press

Published 1:40 pm, Thursday, December 17, 2015

RIO DE JANEIRO — WhatsApp is back online in Brazil.

A Brazilian judge on Thursday struck down a lower-court ruling that temporarily ordered telecoms to block the popular messaging service, snarling communications for many of its 100 million users in Brazil for about 12 hours.

The lower court in Sao Paulo state ordered WhatsApp blocked in connection to a criminal case because it wouldn’t hand over user information.

Details were murky as the case is sealed, though local media reported it concerned an investigation into Brazil’s most powerful drug gang.

But Thursday afternoon, state judge Xavier de Souza overruled the lower court, saying in a statement that “in light of constitutional principles, it doesn’t seem reasonable that millions of users are affected because of the inaction of the corporation” to hand over information to the court.

Mark Zuckerberg, who heads WhatsApp’s parent company Facebook, said in a Facebook post that the case was related to the company’s attempt to guard customers’ data.

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“I am stunned that our efforts to protect people’s data would result in such an extreme decision by a single judge to punish every person in Brazil who uses WhatsApp,” Zuckerberg wrote in his Facebook post.

“Until today, Brazil has been an ally in creating an open Internet,” he added. “Brazilians have always been among the most passionate in sharing their voice online.”

For months they have complained about WhatsApp, saying that they lose revenue because clients use its free services instead of using the phone companies’ own text messaging. But the association representing the cellphone industry, SindiTelebrazil, denied in a statement those companies were the plaintiffs in the case.

Brazilians are among the globe’s most voracious users of social media such as Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter.

Many quickly migrated to WhatsApp’s competitors. Viber said usage in the Brazilian market had grown by 2,000 percent in 12 hours, while the messaging service Telegram said over 1.5 million new Brazilian clients started using it Thursday.

WhatsApp is used by nearly half of Brazil’s population, according to the company.